


there's parts of me i think you know (more than anyone at all)

by demonicneonfishy



Series: holy ghost [3]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memory Loss, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Needs a Hug, POV Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Regaining memory, this was angstier than i intended but there's fluff in there somewhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:27:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29785752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonicneonfishy/pseuds/demonicneonfishy
Summary: Nicky heals. It’s a long, painful process, but Nicky heals. In time, he no longer flinches away from Joe, or gets that distant look when someone brings up a memory he’s forgotten, or wakes up screaming from a nightmare he can never remember.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: holy ghost [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2141787
Comments: 6
Kudos: 117





	there's parts of me i think you know (more than anyone at all)

Nicky doesn’t let go of Joe’s hand.

Not as they leave the building. Not as they join Andy and Nile again, and Andy reaches out to touch his shoulder, and Nile gives them both a relieved smile. Not as they get in the car and drive back to their safehouse. 

Eventually, Joe does have to leave him, so Nicky can shower and change, and so Joe can explain to Nile and Andy. When he lets go, Nicky lets out a strangled whimper at the loss of contact, and Joe’s heart breaks for him just a little more.

“Go shower and change, okay?” he says gently. “I’ll be here when you get out. I just need to go talk to the others for a moment.”

Nicky nods, and disappears into the bathroom.

They decide to stay in one place for a while, for however long it takes Nicky to heal. They still don’t know the full extent of what happened to him, and Joe doesn’t want to push him for details, not yet.

Joe makes sure he’s back in their bedroom, waiting like he’d said he would be, when Nicky exits the bathroom. But when Nicky looks at him, he looks _frightened_.

Even in Jerusalem, he hadn’t been scared of Joe. He’d hated him, but had never been scared. Especially once he’d realised neither of them could die.

This, though… this is something Joe hasn’t seen before. And he’s not quite sure what to do.

“Feeling better?” he asks, trying to keep his tone light. 

He can feel Nicky’s distress as acutely as if he were the one hurting - he’s always felt Nicky’s pain more than he felt his own.

Nicky nods, still staring at Joe. Tentatively, Joe reaches out to touch Nicky’s shoulder, unsure of what else to do. Nicky always says he’s the wordsmith between them, but Joe can’t find what to say.

Nicky takes a shaky breath at the contact, and finally seems to relax: Joe watches as the tension leaves his shoulders, as he seems to breathe just a little easier.

“You should eat something,” Joe says softly, and Nicky nods again.

“Please don’t- don’t let go,” Nicky says.

“I won’t,” Joe promises, and he doesn’t.

* * *

“So how much do you remember?” Andy asks.

They’re sitting in the safehouse’s living room, Joe and Nicky beside each other on the couch, Nile perched on the armrest beside Joe, and Andy in one of the armchairs across from them. 

“Some,” Nicky replies. “Some of it is… I forget the word… cloudy?”

“Try starting small,” Nile suggests. “Go from there and work your way up to the bigger things.”

Nicky nods. 

“My name is Nicoló di Genova,” he begins. “I was born in 1069, in Genoa. I died in 1099, in Jerusalem.” He looks at Joe as if needing confirmation, and Joe nods. “I am nine hundred and- fifty two years old. My family is… Yusuf al-Kaysani, Andromache the Scythian… Sebastien le Livre… Nile… and… there’s someone else, isn’t there?”

“Yeah.” Joe sighs, and Andy stares at a point above all of their heads, her expression unreadable. “Quynh.”

“Quynh,” Nicky repeats. “I… I know her. She’s… lost.”

Andy gets up and leaves the room. 

Nile begins to get up, but Joe stops her. “Give her a minute.”

“I forgot her,” Nicky says. “Quynh. How could I-”

“You’ll remember,” Joe says, as reassuringly as he can manage. “It’ll take time, but you will.”

“But I- she’s our _sister_ , I- she was with us for centuries and I forgot her in a year-”

“Breathe, Nicoló. You’re okay. You remember her now, don’t you? We just need to keep helping you remember.”

“I have an idea,” Nile says. She gets up and takes Andy’s seat. “Do you remember when you started trying to teach me Italian?”

Nicky shakes his head.

“And Joe came over and started speaking too fast for me to follow, and I asked you to translate, and you said…”

“Some things cannot be translated,” Nicky whispers, “without losing their beauty.”

“Yeah.” Nile smiles. “I still think you didn’t want to translate because Joe said something stupid, but…”

“Hey!” Joe says indignantly.

Nile ignores him. “And the time you taught me to use a sword? When we spent the whole day going through footwork? And when we _finally_ got to sparring, and you refused to go easy on me-”

“Because that’s the only way to learn,” Nicky finishes. “It worked, didn’t it? You hit me, in the end.”

“I knocked you on your ass,” Nile corrects. 

“That can’t be right,” Nicky says, almost smiling. Almost.

“No, I was there,” Joe says. “She kicked your ass. You sulked for the rest of the day.”

“I wasn’t _sulking_.”

“You kinda were,” Nile says. 

“I was _not-_ ” 

Joe can’t help laughing at Nicky’s insistence, and Nicky smiles.

Nicky _smiles_. It’s a small thing, nervous almost, but it’s a smile, and Joe will take what he can get.

Andy returns a little while later, while Nile’s recounting the time Nicky made her a birthday cake. Then she begins to chip in with her own memories - _the day Quynh and I found you, and you stepped in front of Joe before you could see who we were and you thought we were a threat, that was when I knew we were going to like you._ Later, Joe joins in too - _the first day you smiled at me, Nicoló, when I made a stupid joke, and I resolved to keep making increasingly worse ones just to see you smile again_. (At that one Andy smiles, shaking her head, and Nile groans dramatically, but smiles at Joe anyway.)

They keep talking, helping Nicky remember, until the sun has gone down and the moon is high in the sky.

* * *

It doesn’t last.

It’s Joe’s turn to shower, and when he gets out, Nicky is lying on his side on the bed, facing the door

“You okay?” Joe asks, sitting down on the edge of the bed. It’s hardly the right question to ask.

Nicky doesn’t respond.

Joe reaches out to touch him, and Nicky flinches. Joe’s hand hovers in midair for a moment before he lets it drop, trying to hide how much it hurts.

“I’m sorry,” Nicky whispers.

“You don’t have to be. But if you need me to sleep in another room for a little while, I can…”

“No!” Nicky almost shouts it, sitting up abruptly. “No, I- it’s not you. Please don’t go.”

Joe exhales slowly. “Okay. Can I…” He indicates the bed, and Nicky nods. Joe lies down on his side, facing him. They can’t be more than a foot apart, and yet they still do not touch.

“I know you’re hurting,” Joe says quietly. “And whatever they did to you in there… you can tell me. I just want to help.”

Nicky takes a breath, and closes his eyes. When he opens them again, he begins to speak.

“When I was in there, I used to… see you. Right in front of me, as if you were in the cell with me. You would speak to me. And sometimes I realised you weren’t real, and other times I thought you were, and I can’t tell which was worse.” Nicky lifts his hand, his hand hovering less than an inch away from Joe’s skin, tracing his cheekbones, his jawline, without ever touching. “And now I want to touch you, but I’m terrified that if I do, my hand will go right through you, because I still can’t manage to convince myself you’re really here.”

 _Oh_. Joe understands everything now - the vice-like grip Nicky had kept on his hand the whole way home, the fear in his eyes when he’d looked at Joe, the way he’d flinched away earlier.

Joe reaches up to cover Nicky’s hand with his own. Nicky lets out a small, surprised gasp at the contact, his eyes filling with tears.

“I’m here, Nicoló,” Joe says. “I promise. This is real.”

Nicky closes his eyes again, his tears spilling over, and Joe reaches out with his free hand to wipe them away. 

“What do you need?” Joe asks. 

“Just don’t let go of me,” Nicky whispers. “Please.”

“Okay,” Joe says, and it’s more of a breath than a word. Nicky rolls over, and Joe wraps his arms around him tightly, pressing a kiss to the nape of his neck. “I have you. Try to sleep.”

Nicky is asleep in the next few breaths, and Joe falls asleep not long after.

* * *

Nicky heals. It’s a long, painful process, but Nicky heals. In time, he no longer flinches away from Joe, or gets that distant look when someone brings up a memory he’s forgotten, or wakes up screaming from a nightmare he can never remember.

Andy and Nile begin going on missions again, but Nicky isn’t quite ready yet, and so he and Joe go to Malta instead. Not before making Andy and Nile promise to call them if anything goes wrong.

Joe wakes one morning to an empty bed, and panics for a moment before realising he can hear Nicky shuffling around in the kitchen. He gets out of bed and leaves their bedroom, seeking out Nicky, as always.

Nicky is standing with his back to Joe, humming quietly to himself. “Morning,” he says without looking over his shoulder as Joe enters the room. “Did you sleep okay?”

“Mmm.” Joe shuffles over to wrap his arms around him from behind, and Nicky leans back to rest his head on Joe’s shoulder. “Where’d you go?”  
“I wanted to make bread,” Nicky responds, and Joe smiles. “And I did. And I didn’t need to use a recipe, I just… remembered how to.”

Joe’s smile widens. “That’s amazing.”

He can’t see Nicky’s answering smile, but he knows it’s there anyway.

Nicky returns to humming quietly, swaying ever so slightly in Joe’s arms. Joe closes his eyes, and revels in the peace of the moment. He hasn’t heard Nicky sing since… since before all this. 

“What is that?” he asks. “It sounds familiar.”

Nicky turns in Joe’s arms and slides his arms around him, tugging him just slightly closer, and begins to sing again. This time, with the words. It takes a moment for Joe to realise why they sound so familiar: they’re _his_ , the words to a poem he’d written centuries ago, that Nicky had made a tune for so he didn’t forget it. And now, centuries later, Nicky is singing his own words back to him. He’s always loved Nicky’s voice.

“I don’t know why you picked that one,” Joe says when he’s finished. “Not one of my best.”

Nicky laughs, and the sound warms Joe’s heart. There had been a few weeks, after, where he wasn’t sure he’d hear it again.

“I love you,” Joe says, leaning forward to touch their foreheads together. 

Nicky smiles at him. “I love you too.”

Later, they sit outside, overlooking the sea, Nicky sitting between Joe’s legs, his back pressed to Joe’s chest, head resting on Joe’s shoulder.

“We should bring Andy and Nile here, next time,” Joe says absentmindedly, tracing circles on the back of Nicky’s hand. “You promised to show Nile the cathedral, remember?”

“I remember,” Nicky replies.

It’s a beautiful day. 

**Author's Note:**

> there's a little angst there but. happy ending to this au!  
> -  
> i'm demonicneonfishy on tumblr too if you wanna come say hi!!


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